Another brief break from the narrative to visit a recent story about the identification of a torso found almost three decades ago in Lake Ontario off Oswego County.

Obviously, there is a symmetry between this story and the discovery of the torso later identified to be Ronnie Gibbons. But the comparision does not end there: The man largely responsible for the identification of the remains in both cases was Ronald Brunelli, a forensics specialist with the Onondaga Medical Examiner’s Office.

It was Brunelli’s work in 2011 that led to the exhumation and identification of Gibbons. And his persistence in matching a missing person data base with unidentified remains is central in the recent identification of the remains of Nancy Jo Scamurra, a 14-year-old missing since 1984.

(To read the initial coverage of the discovery of Ronnie Gibbons’ remains, click here. To subscribe to notifications of this continuing narrative blog, click here. Notifications will also be sent via my Twitter account @gcraig1. )

Leave a Reply

Rochester Brinks depot heist updates

Sign up to receive emails for when new Rochester Brinks depot heist posts are updated here.

The Democrat and Chronicle takes its watchdog responsibilities seriously and believes officials of all stripes should be held accountable. We want to use this blog to keep our audience updated on public service journalism at home and across the nation. And we would like to invite you to join our conversation whenever you are moved to comment or share an idea you have about investigative journalism.

Gary Craig was previously a reporter with the now-defunct Rochester Times-Union, where he covered City Hall and politics. His focus for much of the past decade has been on criminal justice issues. He has won regional, state and national journalism awards, including honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Headliners Awards. His career has taken him to prison riots, national political conventions, and the cockpit of a biplane flying upside down over the Chesapeake Bay. Few of those moments were as memorable as one of his early days at his first newspaper, the Farmville (Va) Herald, a day in which he covered both a chicken house fire and the birth of twin calves. He and his wife, Charlotte, live in Brighton and are the parents of two daughters, neither of whom showed the least bit of interest in journalism as a career.

Sean Lahman is the Democrat and Chronicle’s database specialist. Prior to joining the staff, he was a reporter with the New York Sun, and served as an editor of a number of best-selling sports encyclopedias – including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. Lahman’s 2008 book, The Pro Football Historical Abstract, was called "the best football book of the decade" by the Pro Football Researchers Association. He is perhaps best known for creating the popular Lahman Baseball database, an open source collection of baseball statistics. Lahman attended the University of Cincinnati and lives in Irondequoit. In lieu of hobbies, he has three teenage kids.

Meaghan McDermott has been with the Democrat and Chronicle since 1998, and has come close to reaching her one-time goal of being assigned as a beat reporter to cover each of Monroe County's suburban towns and villages.
Since 2006, her focus has been on the Town of Greece and the Greece Central School District. Her work there, including reporting on financial waste and abuse in an early 2000s schools construction project and corruption in the Greece Police Department, has been recognized with state journalism awards. Over the years, she's also looked into topics such as into the safety conditions of local roadway bridges, school superintendent salaries and perks, teacher pay, teacher discipline, town and village employee pay and overtime and how a spree killer ended up with a pistol permit despite his prior arrests.

Dick Moss is investigations editor at the Democrat and Chronicle and his duties include guiding the public service investigations team. Moss has bounced around among half a dozen editing jobs at the Democrat and Chronicle since 1987, when he started in Rochester as a copy editor. His longest stint was as the newsroom's copy desk chief from 1996 to 2005. He is a 1980 graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. -- where he studied under muckraking journalist Clark Mollenhoff -- and worked as a reporter and editor at several smaller newspapers in Virginia and New York state before joining the Democrat and Chronicle. His academic degrees include a diploma from the Beehive Kindergarten in Flushing, N.Y., that claims he plays well with others. "The sandbox was my favorite playtime activity," Moss says. "I've enjoyed digging in the dirt ever since."

Steve Orr has been a reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle since 1981, and has covered a wide variety of local topics. Over the years he also has looked into, among other things, chemical contamination at the former Kodak Park, sewer tunnel construction snafus, airport construction issues, baseball-stadium construction problems, the troubled life of a man accused of impregnating a comatose nursing home patient, the troubled life and death of a suspected serial killer, railroad crossing safety, the death of a troubled loner while under government care, suburban development trends, crime trends, a suburban property scam, an rigged appraisal-assessment scam, and a scam to cheat institutions out of millions of dollars in nickels, dimes and quarters. He originated the newspaper's computer and Internet column and wrote it weekly for a decade, and also is a former weather and climate columnist. At present Orr focuses on environmental issues. Contact: E-mail | Phone (585) 258-2386 | Twitter.com/SOrr1 | Facebook.com/SteveOrrROC

David Riley joined the Democrat and Chronicle’s watchdog team in 2013. An upstate New York native, he has worked as a journalist for a decade from the Hudson Valley to Greater Boston. Most recently, he was a regional reporter and editor for GateHouse Media in eastern Massachusetts, where he focused on data-driven reporting and wrote stories about everything from state government to the Boston Marathon bombing. He has won regional journalism awards for his coverage of police cameras that scan license plates, river pollution and rapid development in a small town, among other topics. In pursuit of stories over the years, he has attempted to shoot video while riding a bike, fled swarming bees and has been asked to leave numerous parking lots. A SUNY Albany graduate, he lives in Rochester with his wife.